In a typical ink jet recording or printing system, ink droplets are ejected from a nozzle at high speed towards a recording element or medium to produce an image on the medium. The ink droplets, or recording liquid, generally comprise a recording agent, such as a dye or pigment, and a large amount of solvent. The solvent, or carrier liquid, typically is made up of water, an organic material such as a monohydric alcohol, a polyhydric alcohol or mixtures thereof.
An ink jet recording element typically comprises a support having on at least one surface thereof an ink-receiving or image-forming layer, and includes those intended for reflection viewing, which have an opaque support, and those intended for viewing by transmitted light, which have a transparent support.
It is well known that in order to achieve and maintain photographic-quality images on such an image-recording element, an ink jet recording element must:                Be readily wetted so there is no puddling, i.e., coalescence of adjacent ink dots, which leads to non-uniform density        Exhibit no image bleeding        Exhibit the ability to absorb high concentrations of ink and dry quickly to avoid elements blocking together when stacked against subsequent prints or other surfaces        Exhibit no discontinuities or defects due to interactions between the support and/or layer(s), such as cracking, repellencies, comb lines and the like        Not allow unabsorbed dyes to aggregate at the free surface causing dye crystallization, which results in bloom or bronzing effects in the imaged areas        Have an optimized image fastness to avoid fade from contact with water or radiation by daylight, tungsten light, or fluorescent light        
An inkjet recording element that simultaneously provides an almost instantaneous ink dry time and good image quality is desirable. However, given the wide range of ink compositions and ink volumes that a recording element needs to accommodate, these requirements of ink jet recording media are difficult to achieve simultaneously.
Ink jet recording elements are known that employ porous or non-porous single layer or multilayer coatings that act as suitable image receiving layers on one or both sides of a porous or non-porous support. Recording elements that use non-porous coatings typically have good image quality but exhibit poor ink dry time. Recording elements that use porous coatings typically contain colloidal particulates and have poorer image quality but exhibit superior dry times.
While a wide variety of different types of porous image-recording elements for use with ink jet printing are known, there are many unsolved problems in the art and many deficiencies in the known products which have severely limited their commercial usefulness. A major challenge in the design of a porous image-recording layer is to be able to obtain good quality, crack-free coatings with as little non-particulate matter as possible. If too much non-particulate matter is present, the image-recording layer will not be porous and will exhibit poor ink dry times.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,686 relates to a recording sheet for ink jet printing wherein boric acid or its derivative is used to cause gelling in a polymeric binder containing hydroxyl groups and a filler comprising particles. However, there is a problem with this element in that the amount of boric acid used does not provide an element which, when printed with an ink jet printer, will have a fast dry time without cracking.
It is an object of this invention to provide an inkjet printing method using a recording element that has a fast dry time. It is another object of this invention to provide an ink jet printing method using a porous recording element that has good coating quality, especially reduced cracking. It is still another object of this invention to provide an ink jet printing method using an inkjet recording element that exhibits good image quality.